It’s the Senate’s turn in the reconciliation spotlight. With a self-imposed July 4 deadline looming, Senate Republicans are launching into a four-week work period that will see them try to pave over internal differences to pass their own version of the massive budget bill containing much of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.
The Senate will be making changes to the House-passed version. That much is clear. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune will likely have to overcome a series of challenges, as various factions in his conference press for their competing priorities and preferences, from steeper spending reductions to dialing back House cuts to Medicaid or clean energy tax breaks.
Thune, with a 53-seat majority, only needs to secure 51 Republican votes for the bill. Getting there likely won’t be easy, though — and doing it with changes that the House can then pass again will be even harder. Among the most nettlesome issues:
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Spending and deficits: Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has been the most vocal of a group of conservatives insisting on steeper spending cuts, arguing that the federal government shouldn’t be spending at pandemic-era levels and that the House bill, which cuts more than $1.5 trillion in federal spending, doesn’t go far enough. Sens. Mike Lee and Rick Scott have also objected to the spending levels in the House bill.
Sen. Rand Paul on Sunday told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “the math doesn't really add up” on the House bill and noted that the increased funding it would provide for the military and border enforcement exceeds the total cuts made by the Department of Government Efficiency. “Look, the President has essentially stopped the border flow without new money and without any new legislation,” he said. “So, I think they're asking for too much money.”
Paul also made clear that his major objection is to the House plan’s $4 trillion increase in the debt limit, saying that he could likely vote for the rest of the package.
President Donald Trump fired a warning shot toward Paul this weekend in a social media post that said the senator “will be playing right into the hands of the Democrats, and the GREAT people of Kentucky will never forgive him” if he votes against the bill.
- Medicaid: Sens. Susan Collins, Josh Hawley and Lisa Murkowski have raised concerns about the Medicaid cuts in the House bill, and other senators have suggested that the House bill’s targeting of Medicaid provider taxes — a way that states finance their share of Medicaid spending — could be a point of contention.
- Clean energy tax breaks: House conservatives pushed to eliminate or phase out hundreds of billions in clean-energy tax credits passed by Democrats as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. But four GOP senators — Murkowski, John Curtis, Jerry Moran and Thom Tillis — have already come out against repealing the IRA credits. “While we support fiscal responsibility and prudent efforts to streamline the tax code, we caution against the full-scale repeal of current credits, which could lead to significant disruptions for the American people and weaken our position as a global energy leader,” they wrote in an April letter to Thune.
Democrats prepare to challenge what they can: Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer wrote in a letter to colleagues on Sunday that Democrats will use every tool available to them to try to block the GOP bill, challenging policies that they say violate the narrow Senate rules requiring elements of a reconciliation package to directly affect spending, revenues or the debt limit.
“This partisan monstrosity is nothing short of a billionaire handout paid for by American families and we will fight it with everything we’ve got,” he wrote, adding, “After crying foul for years about the deficit, Republicans are once again showing their true colors and ignoring the budget-busting cost of their Tax Scam, seemingly content to burden our children and grandchildren to a lifetime of higher interest rates, higher costs, and fewer opportunities.”
The bottom line: The next four weeks will be critical to determining the shape — and fate — of the Republican megabill.